Environmental applications of nanobubble technology: Field testing at industrial scale
Nicolas Kalogerakis, Georgina C. Kalogerakis, Quartus Paulus Botha
Abstract
Abstract Nanobubble (NB) technology has advanced significantly over the last two decades. Many theoretical and technological advances have been made, including the development of novel devices for NB generation. Proof of principle has been demonstrated primarily at laboratory scale and very encouraging results have been obtained. Yet reports on applications in the field (for ecosystem restoration) or at industrial or large pilot scale (for wastewater treatment) are lacking. In this paper, five field applications of an industrial strength nanobubble generator are presented and key environmental quality parameters have been measured and are presented here. The results indicate the highly successful application of NB technology; however, in most cases the lack of benchmarking does not allow for a quantitative comparison of the benefits of this technology. However, the presented results provide convincing evidence that NB technology works beyond the bench scale in the field and in industrial testing trials. For example, a 1600 m 3 winery wastewater pond was fully restored in 10 weeks and the energy required for COD removal was estimated at 0.515 kWh/kg‐COD. The presented results are a strong indicator of the potential success of the NB technology in environmental applications.